Category: Culture & History

The Jewish Labor Bund’s Medem Sanatorium: 1926-1942

Children at the Medem Sanatorium reading the Bund’s daily newspaper, the Folkstsaytung
Secularism and enlightenment swept through the insular world of East European Jewry, starting in the middle of the 19th century, and ending in the 20th with the . . .

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Old Bolshevism, New Bolshevism, and Lenin’s April Theses

Karl Kautsky as Theorist of Permanent Revolution?

John Marot defends the interpretation of Lenin’s April Theses as the pivotal turning point for the Bolsheviks, countering Lars Lih’s and Eric Blanc’s historical narrative.

Revisiting Their Morals and Ours

A critical examination of Trotsky’s evolving views on revolutionary morality and democracy in revolutionary movements.

When Sri Lanka Operated Workers’ Councils

The history of the Lanka Sama Samaja Party in Sri Lanka and its leading role in establishing workers’ councils across the public sector in the 1970s.

Presentism: African American Epilogue

Enzo Traverso analyzes Saidiya Hartman’s literary work.

A Century Since the March on Rome

Fascism, Past and Present

Historian Stéfanie Prezioso traces the rise of revisionist historiography on Italian fascism.

Review of Communists in Closets

Review of Bettina Aptheker’s recent book Communists in Closets: Queering the History 1930s-1990s

Mike Davis (1946-2022): Miscellaneous Encounters with “A Real Marxist”

Mike Davis, the revolutionary socialist social and culture critic, has died. 

Of Course the Allies Should Have Bombed Auschwitz

Bombing Auschwitz would not have diverted significantly from the actual war effort.  It would have saved thousands or tens of thousands of lives and would have let the world know that Allied moral outrage was more than feel-good propaganda.

review

A New Human History?

A critical examination of David Graeber and David Wengrow’s book, The Dawn of Everything.

The Revolutionary Spirit

A discussion of the work of the Urdu poet Faiz Ahmed Faiz.

The Imaginative Dialectic in the Novels of Victor Serge

A discussion of Victor Serge’s novels and how literature can enrich revolutionary socialist politics.

Will the Real Fascists Please Stand Up?

Martin Oppenheimer discusses the corporatist character of historical fascism and the importance of a left alternative vision to counter fascist threats today.

Speaking Fiction to Power

An Essay on Yuval Noah Harari

Harari’s world-view is rife with inconsistencies and confusion. He is admired by the global neoliberal elite not only because he rarely, if ever, criticizes their core assumptions and values, but also because his vision of the future is one which is fully in tune with their own.

The Transformations of the Cuban Revolution

From Below or From Above?

Although the Cuban Revolution of 1959 had enormous popular support, especially in its early years, that support did not express itself in any autonomous initiative and control from below.

The Socialism of the Jewish Labor Bund

The Jewish Labor Bund, from its beginning, described itself as a Marxist, revolutionary party, wanting thus to place itself in the camp of those opposed to the reformist tendencies in the world socialist movement.

Spotify Itself Is Misinformation

If big-money artists, like Neil Young, are speaking out against Spotify but not mentioning the company’s exploitative practices, then Spotify couldn’t have asked for a better distraction from its wretched business model.

Reply to Eric Blanc’s “Can Leninists Explain the Russian Revolution?: A Reply to Sam Farber”

If the main strategic task for the American Left is to change the existing relation of forces in society, Congress cannot be the main arena of struggle.

Can Leninists Explain the Russian Revolution?

A Reply to Sam Farber

Learning the right lessons from the Russian Revolution is one way socialists today can start to more critically, and more effectively, develop strategies and tactics appropriate to the actual contexts in which we find ourselves.

review

Marx’s Last Years Explored

Karl Marx’s last years, when he famously failed to complete all the volumes of Capital, were for a long time viewed as a period of illness and even senescence, even though he was only 64 years old at his death . . .

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review

The Centrality of Dialectics in Marxist Theory and Politics

Kevin B. Anderson’s1 latest offering, Dialectics of Revolution, brings forward diverse perspectives on the concept of dialectics that have been discussed over the past two centuries. Beginning from Hegel, Anderson extends the discussion to Marx and then further on to . . .

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